Gender and health impacts of policies extending working life in western countries

The goal of this Action is to advance scientific knowledge about the gendered impacts of extended working life on the health and economic well-being of older workers in Europe and to support informed gender-sensitive future policy, explicitly considering the differential needs of women and men. This requires exploring the differential impacts that such policy may have for the health and economic well-being of diverse groups of older workers, using a life course perspective which has been identified as an innovative approach to analysing policy impacts. While life course analysis of pensions has been employed in some COST countries, there is a need to build a research network to develop capacity in life course methods and in gender-aware policy analysis to enable accurate, timely, multi-disciplinary, cross-national analysis of employment policy and practice for older workers. Expected deliverables include: (a) creating a website; (b) depositary database of scientific measures and policy tool-kits; (c) facilitating training schools, Short Term Scientific Missions and conferences; (d) disseminating scientific reports, proceedings, academic publications, policy